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Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

business.financialpost.com

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Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#91

Post by refurb »

zanny wrote: post #41
ryandrake wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is normally done via a "Homestead" tax exemption, where if your vacation home is assessed at $100K, you get taxed on all $100K, but if you live on it, you only get taxed on $100,000-N, where N is the exemption. This is meant to encourage owners occupying their homes, which is a great thing. I don't know if they have it in Vancouver. In California, the exemption is a measly $7000. Which is essentially nothing, gi…

I'd like to just see a return to homesteading period. If a property goes unused / unoccupied for a year, anyone can move in. No more land squatting to drive up real estate prices and use it as a store of wealth. Yes, this kills real estate as a long term investment. No, that is a good thing, we should collectively much rather see capital invested in the stock market rather than being thrown into precious metals or pr…

Homesteading is giving unclaimed land new residents. What you're talking about is squatter's rights.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#92

Post by hoelle »

merpnderp wrote: post #77
api_or_ipa wrote: post #55

As someone who just moved from Vancouver to the Bay Area, it's obvious the issue isn't housing. It's income. My apartment in trendy yaletown was $2350/month for a very nice 2 bed, 2 bath place within 10 mins of anything in downtown. Try finding something even remotely as nice around Silicon Valley. The issue we should be tackling is the low wages seen in the area. The same developer who could make $100k USD in the va…

Vancouver salaries seem exceptionally low. I live in the middle of nowhere USA, and devs start out at from school over $60k USD, and I live on an acre in a 3 bed 3 bath, 6 minutes from downtown and 4 minutes from work. At $2350/month my house would have been paid off in 5 years.

I'm curious if dev salaries in Canada aren't competitive with the US due to more immigration. When I recently visited a large tech company in Canada, I was struck by how much of the team was from everywhere but US and Canada.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#93

Post by jwomers »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #55

As someone who just moved from Vancouver to the Bay Area, it's obvious the issue isn't housing. It's income. My apartment in trendy yaletown was $2350/month for a very nice 2 bed, 2 bath place within 10 mins of anything in downtown. Try finding something even remotely as nice around Silicon Valley. The issue we should be tackling is the low wages seen in the area. The same developer who could make $100k USD in the va…

Those salaries are low and that's a problem, but a nice 2 bed place in SF 10 min from downtown is what - $5000-7000/mo? The rent relative to income seem similar/worse in SF?

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#94

Post by personjerry »

alwaysAttending wrote: post #79
api_or_ipa wrote: post #55

As someone who just moved from Vancouver to the Bay Area, it's obvious the issue isn't housing. It's income. My apartment in trendy yaletown was $2350/month for a very nice 2 bed, 2 bath place within 10 mins of anything in downtown. Try finding something even remotely as nice around Silicon Valley. The issue we should be tackling is the low wages seen in the area. The same developer who could make $100k USD in the va…

San Francisco housing is expensive BECAUSE of the incomes. Vancouver housing is expensive DESPITE the incomes. It's more of a housing issue than an income one. If incomes were higher, rents would only go up as well.

I don't see why we have to separate the two. It sounds like Vancouver faces both increasingly high rent and abnormally low salary for tech jobs (although I recognize that we might not expect Silicon Valley level pay).

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#95

Post by generalpf »

serge2k wrote: post #25
Yhippa wrote: post #4

Where does the youth diaspora in Vancouver lead to? The suburbs? Other cities in Canada or the US?

Loads go to the US. TN is easy to get and you can get close to (or more than) 50% higher salary (not including exchange rate, before tax).

You have to lie and say you're a systems analyst to get a TN visa. (Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.)

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#96

Post by merpnderp »

hoelle wrote: post #92
merpnderp wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vancouver salaries seem exceptionally low. I live in the middle of nowhere USA, and devs start out at from school over $60k USD, and I live on an acre in a 3 bed 3 bath, 6 minutes from downtown and 4 minutes from work. At $2350/month my house would have been paid off in 5 years.

I'm curious if dev salaries in Canada aren't competitive with the US due to more immigration. When I recently visited a large tech company in Canada, I was struck by how much of the team was from everywhere but US and Canada.

My theory is it seems like lots of people want to live in Vancouver, which makes salaries and housing much more competitive. Whereas where I live, people have to be enticed to move here.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#97

Post by dnlhmt »

msvan wrote: post #82

It seems like many major cities of the world are experiencing this problem, and no city has been able to come up with a good solution. It always leads to displacement and newspaper articles about displacement, but no real solutions. Here are a couple of solutions: 1. Build really tall. Hasn't worked out all that great in Hong Kong, though. 2. Rent control. This is often unfair and inflates price of non-rent controlle…

Singapore has been able to solve it to a certain extend. 90%+ of land is owned by the government and leased/purchased back to its residents at an affordable rate. This generates revenue the government can re-invest into the economy. It also reduces the impact of a small group of rent seekers siphoning billions out of the local economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#98

Post by Zach_the_Lizard »

legutierr wrote: post #3

> There are already enough houses and condos in the city with no lights on because no one actually lives in them. To me, there seems to be a pretty obvious public policy response. Institute a very high property tax, which is abated on some kind of curve according to the amount of time the owner or tenants spend living in a property, with no tax being due if the property is legitimately occupied for more than, say, te…

>To me, there seems to be a pretty obvious public policy response. Institute a very high property tax, which is abated on some kind of curve according to the amount of time the owner or tenants spend living in a property, with no tax being due if the property is legitimately occupied for more than, say, ten months.

This punishes newcomers and rewards staying in the same property, just like California Prop 13. Have a kid and need a new place with more space? Prepare to pay punishing property taxes for that luxury. You grew up in the area and it's time to move out? Enjoy your tax! Moving from the countryside for better employment opportunities? Tax please!

Because of the strong disincentive to move, there's now going to be fewer units on the market than would otherwise be expected. House prices go up, not down, and the moving tax is likely to be regressive.

>It might not solve the problem entirely, but at least you would reduce the effect of a diminution of housing supply that is driven by these kinds of absentee owners, and that must be driving up rents, at least.

In this case it will exacerbate it, just like Prop 13. It's really a moving tax disguised as a property tax.

There is, however, a tax that will punish absentee owners but also not create distortions: a land value tax.

It's similar to a normal property tax, except it's on the value of the land only, not land and improvements or improvements only. A single family home on a particular lot is taxed the same as a skyscraper or an empty lot sitting on that same lot.

This punishes land speculators and NIMBY types, cannot be passed on in rent (normally taxes decrease the supply somewhat, so some of the tax can be passed on, but land is fixed in value and a tax cannot reduce its supply), and does not punish building like a standard property tax does. It allows cities to capture value from infrastructure improvements, such as running a new transit line.

The practical concerns are similar to a standard property tax: how do we do assessments? The great thing about it is that land is easier to compare than buildings are.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#99

Post by Zach_the_Lizard »

zanny wrote: post #41
ryandrake wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is normally done via a "Homestead" tax exemption, where if your vacation home is assessed at $100K, you get taxed on all $100K, but if you live on it, you only get taxed on $100,000-N, where N is the exemption. This is meant to encourage owners occupying their homes, which is a great thing. I don't know if they have it in Vancouver. In California, the exemption is a measly $7000. Which is essentially nothing, gi…

I'd like to just see a return to homesteading period. If a property goes unused / unoccupied for a year, anyone can move in. No more land squatting to drive up real estate prices and use it as a store of wealth. Yes, this kills real estate as a long term investment. No, that is a good thing, we should collectively much rather see capital invested in the stock market rather than being thrown into precious metals or pr…

Adverse possession is one mechanism to seize property from absentee owners that is already on the books.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#100

Post by dubiousness »

ldd wrote: post #61
branchless wrote: post #27

Come to Montreal! It's great here. No way would I want to pledge the rest of my life to a bank in exchange for the right to exist. Rent controls here. It's odd: it's like the state understands that banks are bastards. Montreal has some issues with organised crime but nothing compared to the organised crime of banking / money laundering through land. I don't have to pay some gangster $1MM for a shack. Leave the boomer…

Don't. I'm seriously thinking about moving to Toronto right now. I have a Soft. Eng. degree from McGill and I can't find any business in this city that will pay me minimum wage.

Wat? Are you even trying? I didn't even finish my comp-sci degree at Concordia and since I've started working I've never had to go unemployed between jobs. If you're a skilled developer there is no reason why you should be unemployed right now.
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